


Beyond a Row of Myrtles

by disenchanted



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Chocolate Box Treat, Christianity, Class Differences, Denial of Feelings, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Rank Difference, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, navel-gazing about immorality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 04:00:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17780171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/pseuds/disenchanted
Summary: Gibson and Irving meet, and meet again.





	Beyond a Row of Myrtles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



Waiting for Irving to give in, to admit it, even to himself, was like waiting for _Terror_ to be crushed or spat out by the pack. The ice shifted; the ship’s timbers bent with its weight. It could only go on like that for so long. Weeks passed, then months, hauling the expedition along behind them. Gibson spent his spare time reading: when he was alone he read _Paradise Lost_ , the _Inferno_ , which he did not understand but found easier to believe in than what he read with Irving, who preferred the New Testament and low-church books of prayer. He carved wood when reading bored him. Before he fell asleep at nights, he brought himself off thinking of Irving buggering him, wondering whether Irving had at least enough self-knowledge to do the same.

It was after Cornelius’ punishment, after every seaman Gibson had counted as a friend left for Erebus, that Irving gave him a shirt to mend. The seam connecting the left sleeve with the shoulder had come loose. The shirt hadn’t been washed lately: alone in his bed-cabin, with the curtain drawn shut, Gibson lifted it to his face and breathed deeply, taking in the stale scent of Irving’s dried sweat. Giving it over to him, Irving had let his fingertips brush against Gibson’s hand, and had not flinched away. Gibson knew the look of a man who was imagining him with a cock in his mouth.

Though he had to squint over the needle and thread to do it by lamplight, Gibson mended the shirt carefully. He put it on himself when he was finished, to make certain that his stitching didn’t come loose if he raised or extended his arm. He felt Irving’s scent cling to him, seep into him, so that even after he washed and dried and folded the shirt, something of Irving remained in him. It was the sort of thing a lover would do. Irving treated him like a lover, too: he brought him things he had taken from the officers’ mess—comfits, anchovies, pickled gherkins, even once a small pot of orange marmalade—as if he thought Gibson was too scrupulous to pilfer these things for himself. If Gibson were a woman, and respectable, he would have suspected Irving of wanting to marry him.

Gibson waited until six bells into the first watch to return Irving’s shirt to him. It was later than he would ordinarily come to an officer, but even with the regular ringing of the ship’s bell, time was loose here, loosening more as the sunless days went on. Some officers slept as much as they could; some, like Irving, hardly slept even when they had the time for it. Irving was awake now. The lamp in his bed-cabin was lighted, the whale oil giving off its familiar dockside scent as it burned.

‘Thank you,’ said Irving, taking the shirt in his hands. He was standing in the doorway; he wasn’t moving to close the door. He only wore his shirt and trousers, which to Gibson seemed like provocative undress. ‘Will you come in?’

So here it was: Irving was giving himself up to it. Gibson tried to remember what God said in _Paradise Lost_ when he saw that Satan was going to Eden. Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance…Irving reached past him to slide the door shut. Really Gibson only understood half of what Milton wrote, and he feared asking Irving to explain because the only thing Irving had ever said about Milton was that he didn't have a proper respect for the Trinity. All that theology was beyond Gibson; he supposed he hadn’t any imagination.

‘Have I done everything,’ asked Gibson, ‘to your satisfaction, Lieutenant?’

Irving looked at the shirt in his hands as if it were a wrapped parcel whose contents he was unsure of and which he did not want to open. There was a swell in his trousers that must have been his prick. Just the sight of it provoked a resonant stirring in Gibson.

Rather than do Irving the unkindness of forcing him to speak, Gibson said, ‘I find sometimes it’s better to act, and to take stock of one’s morality later.’

Who was he, Irving’s wide eyes seemed to say, to lecture his superior on morality? To suggest that immorality might at any point be welcome? The most dangerous thing was that Gibson was giving himself away: he was no blushing innocent, he had the same desires as Cornelius Hickey did, and similar ways of satisfying them. If Irving liked he could run to Captain Crozier and demand Gibson be flogged for dirtiness just the same as Cornelius. Gibson did not know what he was putting his faith in, Irving’s mercy or his lust.

Irving smeared his first two fingers across Gibson’s lips. It could have been a gesture of profound disrespect or of clumsy affection. Go on, thought Gibson, keeping his eyes on Irving’s. But Irving only conceded when Gibson took his wrist. Directly Gibson had curled his fingers, Irving was grasping at Gibson’s hand, aligning it with his own, bringing it down to cup his prick, which was full stiff and dizzyingly big. Irving had shut his eyes; the mended shirt he still clutched in his left hand. He fell back willingly when Gibson pushed him against the wall.  

‘I won’t say anything,’ whispered Gibson, ‘I won’t ask anything of you, I won’t ask to do this again unless you ask.’

Just as quietly, Irving said, ‘He laughed at me when I told him I knew he had pressed you. I thought it was the most unbelievable cheek.’

Gibson untucked Irving’s prick from his trousers and pulled at it hard, drawing the holy fury out of him inch by inch. Irving’s body seemed, then, very living: his chest rose and fell, his thighs tensed and untensed, he quivered. Was it the first time he had done this at sea, the first time he had done this with a man, the first time he had done this? His face contorted as if he might make noise, but he was silent. He held his breath, thrust into Gibson’s hand, and after a moment of rigid stillness, spent. After about ten seconds of relieved exhalation he was wiping his prick with his shirttail, tucking his shirt back into his trousers, nervous like a midshipman who’d just seen a whore for the first time and felt that he ought not to make undue demands on her time.

Finding that he had not yet let go of the shirt, Irving staggered the single step that it took to cross the narrow cabin and tucked it into one of the drawers beneath the bed. He said, ‘Goodnight, Mr Gibson.’

At the first bell of the middle watch, Gibson was in bed, his knees drawn up so that his long legs fit on the too-short mattress. His toes, swaddled in woollen socks and covered by layers of blankets, touched the wall. His prick was miserably hard; his body was hot and alert, primed for sensation. He reached into the blankets and got himself off as quickly as he was able, feeling it would be wrong to waste the privilege of a private bed-cabin, which he had never had before.

 

* * *

 

‘While we were at Whalefish Island,’ began Lieutenant Irving, ‘I wrote the last letter to my brother’s wife, to whom I’ve been a friend.’

It was Sunday afternoon. That morning Crozier had given a divine service that was slurred and laughably short; at one point, reading aloud from the Book of Common Prayer, he turned two pages at once and went on reading without noticing. Afterwards he had turned them all to their idle tasks of mending and cleaning. Irving and Gibson sat across from each other at a table in the seamen’s mess, trying to keep their knees from touching. They were only here because Gibson had gone to Irving and said he was in need of spiritual guidance, which Irving knew for a lie and pretended he didn’t.

Irving went on: ‘I told her that we would be burdened with few temptations, here. We would put our minds to our work and to God and think of very little else. Do you suppose it’s still possible, Mr Gibson? Now that we’ve seen death, and terrible suffering?’

This must have been meant as some sort of test of Gibson’s moral aptitude. Say yes, and be rewarded for his faith; say no, and invite kindly correction. There was nothing in Irving’s demeanour that suggested he suffered from such a disease as doubt.

Across the mess, Cornelius was sitting in a circle of Marines, shuffling a deck of cards. The Marines wouldn’t have noticed, but he let his gaze rove now and then towards Gibson and Irving, lingering long enough to be noticed and then drawing away again. Gibson only saw this in the corner of his vision: he was afraid of looking into Cornelius’ eyes. In the autumn of 1846, when he was courting him, Cornelius looked at him so boldly that he thought everyone else must have seen, and known what such a look portended.

‘I don’t know what’s possible and what isn’t,’ said Gibson. ‘I suppose everything is possible.’

‘Through God,’ Irving reminded him.

Gibson had felt that the statement needed no qualification. He shifted on the bench so that his knee pressed up against Irving’s.

 

* * *

 

Irving was a hypocrite, but Gibson was, too. He committed immorality, he was knowingly immoral, and he expected somehow never to be punished for it. Perhaps Irving was right, and even if he went to the grave not having suffered for his wrongs, not having ever been lashed or court-martialled, he would suffer in Hell, and suffer there for much longer than the duration of a lashing. But what did Irving know, really, that Gibson didn’t? The things he had been taught as a midshipman, the arts of navigation and mathematics, the behaviour of a gentleman; but none of that had a whit to do with God. Anything was possible: perhaps Gibson wouldn’t, after all, ever suffer. Perhaps Irving was suffering for nothing.

When Gibson came again to Irving’s bed-cabin, he came without an excuse or an offering. He was in officers’ country in only his shirt and trousers, boldly empty-handed. If someone saw them together and asked what they were about, Gibson would make Irving fumble for an excuse the way he’d had to do when Irving caught him and Cornelius.

Saying nothing, Irving beckoned him in and shut the door behind him. Irving had the look of a shepherd who’d lost his flock, lost and strangely boyish. His cheeks were ruddy and his lips were parted. His prick was hard enough that it must have been uncomfortable, keeping it in his trousers, but he made no move to unbutton. Did he expect that Gibson would do it for him because he was a steward?

‘Shall I go?’ asked Gibson, quietly enough that Irving wouldn’t worry he might he overheard.

Irving shook his head. No, no, there he was, giving in again; that moment of capitulation came through clearer on a man’s face than the moment of crisis. He had entered a trance that would only end once he did finish. Shamelessly now, Irving unbuttoned his trousers just enough to allow his extraordinary prick to spring loose. Having done that, he did not touch himself but unbuttoned Gibson’s slops for him, and tugged Gibson’s prick with a familiar confidence that gave Gibson some idea of what he’d been doing to himself these past months.

Lord, thought Gibson, what a lot of rot Irving would be talking now, if he could talk. Would he try to justify it or to deny he was doing it at all? Gibson put an arm around Irving’s neck and clung to him, and stepped back so that it was him against the wall, Irving blocking him in. They were so quiet, and _Terror_ so quiet, that Gibson heard Irving swallow. He got his thigh between Irving’s and thrust against Irving’s hip, spotting Irving’s shirttail with the fluid that dripped from his prick. Irving bore down upon him, pulling his shirt up to rub a hand up his side, raising gooseflesh.

The ship’s bell rang four times, signalling the halfway point of middle watch. When it first rang Irving went still, holding himself taut against Gibson; it was only after the bell stopped ringing and there were no footsteps in the passageway or rustling from the neighbouring bed-cabins that Irving began to move again, this time painfully slow, rubbing his thigh against Gibson’s prick so lightly that it only inflamed him.

Gibson caught Irving’s gaze and held it with the dull unblinking intensity of his own. He closed his own hand around his prick and mouthed, with no sound, a series of things he would never tell an officer aloud: Oh God I hope you fuck me, I hope you do, I hope you fuck me till it hurts, I’ll take anything. He watched Irving’s face as Irving watched him spending, and saw how his mouth dropped open as if in wonder. What did he see? Was it as beautiful as the Arctic, or as divine? Gibson would have been surprised if it was: he had seen himself in the mirror, and he was only flesh like any other flesh.

Irving put his head in the crook of Gibson’s neck and let Gibson stroke him till he spent. Feeling the twitching of that thick prick in his palm, the wetness of the spend, provoked a faint confused heat in Gibson’s own softening cock that he relished for what it was.

Distractedly Gibson thought of how the deepest part of the Inferno was ice, and Satan was at the middle of it, waist-deep like a ship in the pack. As a parallel to the expedition it only went about that far. Nobody in Dante’s Hell had been sent there with three to five years of provisions, a desalination system, and a Fraser stove. And there was such pleasure here—a rare kind that would have been impossible anywhere else.

Before Irving got his wits about him, Gibson took him by the front of his shirt and kissed him. Irving pulled back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, startled; but instead of tearing himself out of Gibson’s hold, he leant into it again, putting his fingers in Gibson’s hair and dragging him forward to be kissed. Irving kissed chastely, with sweet presses of his closed lips. Gibson wondered if he had ever learnt how to kiss with tongue, and decided to teach him; he let Irving’s lip rest between his parted lips, and gave him soft kisses that deepened until their tongues touched, which for a long glorious while—longer than Gibson had expected—Irving allowed. That was all Gibson could have asked of him.

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Irving. He was buttoning his trousers, tucking in his shirt, half turned away from Gibson. ‘Go—you can’t stay. You’ll be missed.’

‘Goodnight, Lieutenant,’ said Gibson. In the passageway, with the door shut behind him, he pressed his unwashed hands to his face and tried to think of nothing, remember nothing, anticipate nothing, for five bloody seconds before he went on. He thought: Thus while God spake, thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance… What did ‘ambrosial’ mean? He supposed Lieutenant Irving would know.

 

* * *

 

The next morning was as dark as the night before. No light came through the hatches; all but one had been sealed up for the winter. Gibson woke with a pain in his head, an ache in his teeth, and a profound disorientation, a sense that he was waking somewhere different than where he had fallen asleep. Things settled into place only slowly.

Irving was missing from the officers’ breakfast. Serving their porridge, Gibson heard Lieutenant Hodgson telling Lieutenant Little that Irving was feeling unwell and had gone to Dr Peddie for a restorative. Gibson wondered whether he had woken with a pain in his head too. More likely he had only made an excuse to keep from facing him. Well, they would see each other again; until the expedition was finished they would have no choice.

Later, during the forenoon watch, Gibson was passing by the ladder from the lower deck to the orlop and saw Cornelius there, descending. He carried no tools; he was shirking, and giving Gibson the smile of a shirker who knew he was getting away with it. Gibson was there because he had been sent down to the storeroom to retrieve the Goldner’s tins required for the officers’ dinner: ox cheek soup, veal and ham pate, haricots verts. Cornelius was between him and the storeroom.

‘Here you are,’ said Cornelius, ‘the second-holiest man on this ship. _Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth._ Is that what he told you, too?’

‘He hasn’t told me anything,’ said Gibson, and stepped past Cornelius, almost smiling, trying to remember where he had heard those words before.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- 'To whom the wilie Adder, blithe and glad. / Empress, the way is readie, and not long, / Beyond a row of Myrtles...' (Paradise Lost, 9.625-27)  
> \- 'Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill'd / All Heav'n...' (Paradise Lost, 3.135-36)  
> \- 'And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.' (KJV Rev. 19.6)


End file.
